Cloverdale (Book 4): Confrontation

by Miller, Bruno

Vince breathed a small sigh of relief. He’d take two walkers over a gang of looters any day. He had to smile at Bill’s enthusiasm. He could tell by the sound of Bill’s voice that he was already plenty keyed up about the situation. Bill was a faithful employee, hard worker, and rock-solid family guy, but Vince found himself having to rein him in at times. He thought about the early shot Bill took during their very first encounter with the looters. It made Vince eager to get moving.

  “Cy, you ready? We need to get over to the motel.” Vince was yelling and nearly ran into his son in the darkened hallway.

  “Whoa. What’s going on? Did you find out?” Cy asked.

  “Yeah, there’s a couple people out near the interstate on foot. Looks like they’re heading here.”

  Cy blew a short blast of air through his lip. “Um, maybe we need to figure out some different alarms to use for nonemergency stuff.”

  “I agree. Come on, let’s head over.” Vince was actually thinking the same thing. He was glad Sarah blew the horn—she did exactly what anyone standing watch was supposed to do—but for something like this, they needed to find a better way to alert everyone. The two blasts served their purpose well at night or in the early-morning hours since they were loud enough to wake most and get their adrenaline pumping at the same time. Plus, it would let the looters know that they’d been spotted.

  But in situations like this, Vince thought it best to take a more laid-back approach. There was no need to work people up for no reason. Bill, for example, was full of too much adrenaline, and the guy was a loose cannon. That wasn’t how Vince wanted to greet new people. They could be guarded and polite at the same time. As easy as it was to think the whole world was out to get them, Vince and the others knew it wasn’t. There were some good folks out there who were going through some rough times, just like they were.

  The last thing Vince wanted to be guilty of was not helping out his fellow man, especially when the situation warranted it. If Cloverdale was going to survive, it needed more people. There was safety in numbers as well. And even though more people meant more mouths to feed, that was okay with him. They’d figure it out.

  There were bound to be plenty of growing pains, but those were part of life even before the EMPs hit. They just had to be careful about whom they allowed in.

  Vince and Cy strolled over to the motel parking lot, where Bill and Sarah were both standing outside the pickup. Bill was stretched over the hood with his rifle, busy watching the two strangers approaching from the interstate.

  “Looks like we got some more visitors.” John appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly twenty feet away and approaching from behind.

  “I guess we should go up and meet them at the wall,” Vince stated.

  “Do you need me to move the truck? Are we gonna let them in?” Bill looked at Vince and then back at John.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Cy had the binoculars now. “They look pretty harmless to me. Just a man and a woman moving really slowly.”

  Vince happened to notice some of the others had come out of their rooms and were gathering outside along the motel vestibule. Among them was Mary, her shotgun hanging loosely from her right side. Vince motioned for her to come over and join them at the truck.

  As soon as she was close enough to hear what Vince had to say, he started to explain how he wanted to do this.

  “How about you, me, John, and Cy go out to meet these people? Bill, you be ready in your truck to open up the gate if we decide to bring them in.” Vince wanted to include Mary in the initial meeting with these people for a lot of reasons, but mostly because one of the strangers was a woman and Vince thought Mary’s presence might help soften the impression of what would otherwise be four armed men coming at them.

  They all agreed and headed out to the wall in Bill’s Dodge. From the outer edge of the motel lot, it was only a hundred yards or so to the wall, but Bill had to drive over anyway, so they all caught a ride in the back of his pickup. In a matter of minutes, Bill had the Suburban moved enough to allow a couple of people through if they were walking side by side.

  “All right now, Bill, I want you to stay here and be our backup. I don’t mind if they see your rifle, but don’t point it at them, okay?” Vince asked.

  Bill nodded. “Got it, Major.”

  Vince, Mary, Cy, and John headed through the gap in the wall and stood in line on the other side. Vince had the binoculars now and was trying to learn as much as he could about the people before they reached the gate. They were a little closer now, and the first thing he noticed was that neither of them appeared to be carrying a weapon of any kind. The man was using something to help him walk, but it looked more like a stick than anything else.

  He struggled to make out the details of the two approaching strangers just yet. The sun was already bright in the sky, and the heat rising off the asphalt blurred the image in the binoculars. It was going to be a brutal day weather-wise. As soon as they sorted things out with the newcomers, they needed to get out of the heat. The last place they should be standing right now was next to a wall made of metal and glass that reflected the sunlight.

  Vince looked back at Bill, who was faithfully sitting inside his truck. “We need to walk out a little ways and meet them. Otherwise, we’re going to be here all day.”

  Bill pulled at his ball cap. “I got things covered here.”

  Vince looked down the line at the other three, and they headed out. As soon as they stepped away from the wall, the temperature dropped noticeably, and he was glad they moved, but the real reason he wanted to head out was because it didn’t look like the man with the walking stick was ever going to reach them. They were moving incredibly slow, like they were on their last leg.

  At what must have been less than fifty yards, the full scope of their condition came into focus, and any apprehension Vince had about these people evaporated. He’d seen homeless people on the streets of Indianapolis who looked better off than these two.

  Mary let out an audible gasp as she began to pick up speed and move toward the elderly couple with haste. Vince and the others followed suit and jogged the last several yards to intercept the couple. Mary reached the woman just in time, as she all but collapsed before Mary caught her.

  Vince had been so focused on the old man that he hadn’t noticed how much the woman was depending on him to stay upright. These two weren’t what he was expecting at all, and he felt bad for bringing guns with them instead of water.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Vince had a hard time believing these two had made it this far. He wasn’t sure where they had come from, but by the looks of them, they had been through the wringer. It was hard for him to judge their age, but they must have been in their eighties. Maybe they were younger, but their filthy, ripped clothing and dirt-encrusted faces made it hard to tell exactly.

  “Wa…wa…water,” the woman whispered through cracked lips. Vince looked at Mary, who shook her head.

  “I didn’t bring any. We need to get them back to the motel.”

  John and Cy carried the man, and Mary and Vince assisted the woman, who was still able to walk with their help. Bill saw them coming and maneuvered the truck so the tailgate was only a few feet past the opening. They loaded the two strangers into the back of Bill’s truck and then climbed in with them for the short ride back to the motel.

  “You better head back and close the gate. We’ll take care of these guys,” Vince shouted to Bill as he and the others unloaded the couple and started making their way into the motel office. There was a comfortable couch and two recliners in the office, and it was close, so it seemed like the best place to take them. For the most part, the woman was able to walk the twenty feet or so on her own, but the man needed to be carried the entire way.

  Cy grabbed the small plastic shopping bags they had been carrying and brought them inside as well.

  The woman tried to thank them, but nothing came out when her lips moved.

&n
bsp; “Just save your energy. We’ll get you some water,” Vince reassured them. Before he could say anything else, Mary was behind him with two small containers of water. The woman took a drink, spilling a good deal of the water as she gulped.

  “Easy, not too fast. You’ll make yourself sick,” Mary warned, but it was too late, and the woman launched into a fit of coughing. When she regained her composure, she looked embarrassed but took another, smaller drink from the container. As soon as she was finished, she took over for Mary, who was assisting her husband with his container. Vince assumed he was her husband, at least.

  After a half-hour or so of the couple slowly hydrating and a quick check of their health by Reese, Vince and Mary helped the man and his wife get situated in Room 111 between the Meyers and Jackie. They were in no shape to carry on a conversation, but they managed to give Vince and the others quite a bit of information anyway. Vince would let them rest before he tried to learn who they were and where they’d come from, but they seemed eager to talk in spite of Mary and Reese’s advice that they should rest.

  They were Albert and Helen Kingsly from Terre Haute, Indiana. Vince was surprised to hear that. Terra Haute was only about a forty-minute drive west on the interstate. From the looks of the two, he would have guessed they’d come from much farther away.

  Albert went on to tell them about how their Oldsmobile had broken down about ten miles back on Interstate 70 two days ago. Slowly and surely, they’d made their way along the interstate until they spotted the wall of cars.

  Albert said they were desperate and decided to take a chance on finding friendly people in Cloverdale. He also figured that if someone would take the time and effort to build a wall like that, then they must be protecting something good. After what they had been through in Terra Haute, they had nothing to lose.

  They were both fortunate to be up and in their kitchen last Sunday morning when the EMPs hit. Their panel box in the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen began to spark and pop. Eventually, the panel went quiet, but the smoke continued, and soon there were flames. Albert used a pair of oven mitts to open the door, and to his surprise, the inner workings and breakers had melted away, leaving behind a flaming wall cavity.

  He and Helen worked together and managed to put the fire out. It took all of their kitchen fire extinguisher and one from the garage, along with a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator, which they regretted later. Their neighbors weren’t so lucky, however, and when all was said and done, they were the only house standing for miles.

  They tried to hold out for as long as they could, but it became too hard and too dangerous. As the days went by, they were forced to defend their house from people fleeing the heart of the city. The more days that passed, the more aggressive the looters became. They were basically boarded up inside the house and living off an ever-dwindling supply of food and water.

  All this was fascinating, and by now, almost all the survivors had gathered in their room and outside the open window, listening to Albert tell his story. Mary urged him to stop and rest, but he refused and carried on with what little voice he had left, only pausing long enough to take an occasional drink of water. And while his story of their survival was very fascinating, it paled in comparison to the information he laid on them next.

  As it turned out, Albert was retired Air Force and had been an air traffic control man in his former life. A “desk jockey,” as he jokingly called it. But he’d been out of the game for some time now and had taken up ham radio as a way to keep busy and stay in touch with some of his old Air Force pals.

  He had a battery backup system for his radio and was able to intercept some sporadic signals for the first three days after the blast, before it all went silent. He’d received information indicating that the North Koreans and Syrians were responsible for the attacks. The national missile defense system had been compromised with a virus, allowing the North Koreans to launch a barrage of ICBMs almost unopposed. They used strategically positioned submarines up and down both coasts to reach targets all over the United States.

  The plan was to use EMPs in an effort to spare infrastructure and then invade, but many of the nukes malfunctioned and detonated much lower in the atmosphere than intended. The result was the world they were living in today. The government deployed what assets it had and assisted FEMA in setting up camps in some of the larger cities across the U.S., but nobody was prepared to deal with the armed and violent hordes of people who needed supplies.

  As far as Albert knew now, the U.S. government had pulled back its efforts and was focusing on damage control for the near future. He listed a few of the cities that were hit the hardest with some of the lower-detonating bombs. Among them were San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and D.C.

  Albert cautioned that this was not official information, but it was devastating to hear nonetheless. Everyone was speechless. Some were in tears. It was information that they needed but none of them wanted. Vince had longed to know what was going on outside their little world here, and now he did and was sorry. The information made him physically ill, and he fought the urge to leave the room and get some fresh air.

  In a few short seconds, all his fears were confirmed, and without a doubt, now he knew they were going to be on their own for a long time. He had hoped to avoid suffering through a cold, harsh winter, but it was a guarantee now.

  Everyone had the same look of shock and disbelief on their faces and remained silent. The only sound in the room was Buster and Nugget panting. Albert took this as an opportunity to add some more information to his story. He had managed to save the ham radio equipment when they fled Terra Haute, and it was currently in the trunk of the broken-down Oldsmobile.

  That little bit of information helped soften the blow for Vince, and he knew immediately that they had to try and get it back. The radio would be worth its weight in gold if they could make it operational. Eventually, even if it was a year from now, they would need the ability to communicate with anyone else out there who could give them information. At some point, maybe they could even pick up emergency broadcasts from the government when it was back online. The government would come back, wouldn’t it? This couldn’t be the end of the country he loved and lost friends for—or could it?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Mary was finally able to convince Albert to take a break by serving him and his wife each a bowl of oatmeal with pieces of fruit in it. As everyone dispersed and murmured quietly to one another, Vince prepared himself for the onslaught of questions.

  John was the first to approach him outside the Kingslys’ room. “So when are we going for the Oldsmobile?” Vince had to laugh a little. His friend knew him too well.

  “Sooner rather than later. Let’s give it a couple hours and let it cool down a bit. Then we’ll go.”

  “Sounds good. I’m gonna head back over to see if I can make any headway cleaning that place up. Let me know when you’re ready.” Satisfied they had a plan, John headed back to the Andersen house.

  Cy had overheard some of their brief conversation. “I want to go with you guys. I can help you out. Maybe we can get their car running and drive it back here.”

  It was a reasonable request, and Vince was happy his son wanted to be a part of things.

  “Yeah, I don’t see why not. I’ll let you know before we head out.” So much for his drive today and the chance for a little solitude, but just the thought of getting their hands on a functioning ham radio would be worth the effort. And if Vince played his cards right, he might be able to work in some solo time behind the wheel on their outing anyway.

  With everyone out of the Kingslys’ room, Mary closed their door and gave them some much-needed privacy and time to recover. Vince was still reeling from the news that Albert had shared with them. By the looks on the others’ faces, they were struggling to come to terms with the new information as well. What did it all mean? Vince was pretty sure about one thing. They shouldn’t expect any help from anyone, and the grid was lik
ely to be down for a very long time.

  It was strange how badly he’d wanted to know what was going on. At night, he lost sleep over it, thinking about all the possibilities and who was responsible for the EMPs. Now that he knew, he wished he didn’t, in a way. Ignorance wasn’t necessarily bliss in this case, but knowing that some cities had been wiped off the map didn’t help. From what he and Cy had seen last Sunday morning at the airport, he would have guessed Indianapolis was on the list of places that were decimated.

  The image of the glass and concrete walkway that connected the parking garage to the terminal ran through his mind. He could still see the faces of the people who had been unlucky enough to be caught in the middle. The screams were something he would never forget. Vince pictured that scene playing out all over the country and cringed as he thought about the millions of people who surely died on that day and in the days following.

  The fact that North Korea was responsible came as no shock, but he never would have guessed that Syria would be involved. It seemed like an unlikely partnership, but none of that really mattered now, did it?

  Vince surveyed the parking lot as the crowd dispersed. He was relieved to see everyone going their way and heading back to their rooms. He was trying to prepare himself for an onslaught of questions about how this new information would affect them all, but they never came. It was the hottest part of the day. Maybe everyone just wanted to get out of the sun and suffer through the heat in private. Or maybe they were in shock from the news. He was, at least a little.

  A part of him didn’t believe what he’d heard; he definitely didn’t want to. The worst part was that the places Albert had named were probably only the ones he’d heard about. How many other cities could be added to the list? Hundreds, Vince feared.

  He sighed and headed for the room, trying to shake the images from his head. His mind was beginning to wander toward the darker side of things, and he didn’t want to go there right now.